Missing America's beard moment

Lenore Skenazy

While you're at it, also pity a lot of guys in religious sects, like Hasidic Jews and Sikhs, as well as a subset of average American guys who feel the need for a bushy beard but just can't grow a good one. Like women who want big breasts, these men are desperate. And just like those women, these men, too, are willing to consider implants.

We are? Perhaps so. From Brad Pitt to "Duck Dynasty," we do seem to be experiencing a Smith Brothers moment. Did you watch the Oscars? More beards there than in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI!

So now, in addition to downloading beard grooming videos, gulping beard vitamins and scooping up the main items Brunskill's company sells - high-end wooden beard combs and beard oil - some men are going the next step and seeing the surgeon.

"We take out individual (scalp) hair follicles and actually inject them into the areas on the face that don't have hair," says Dr. Gary Hitzig, former medical director of the American Hair Loss Council and author of the book "Help & Hope for Hair Loss." With offices in New York and Scandinavia, he does 30 to 50 beard implants a year. "The idea of it came about a long time ago, but the technology to do it well has only been around for four or five years."

Generally, Hitzig doesn't create an entire beard but fills in hairless patches caused by scars or alopecia, a condition that can leave hair-barren spots that are usually about the size of a half dollar. His clients are a cross section of men, but for a while, he was doing a lot of Hassidim. One of them brought along a minyan - a group of 10 other religious men - to pray for him while he got his implant. Why was a beard that important?

"Apparently, for them to make it as top rabbis, beards were very important," says Hitzig. Demand from the sect he was seeing peaked in the 1990s. And now that the cosmetic industry has developed a stick-on beard patch that can stay on for up to two weeks at a time (imagine a round, hairy Band-Aid), some clients are choosing that instead.

Pirooz Sarshar, a men's grooming expert in New York City who teaches guys how to do things such as moisturize and shave, sees the beard implant trend continuing to grow. He's willing to help anyone with a beard learn to style (and wash!) it. But for him, personally, clean-shaven is the way to go.

''I was born in the Middle East and left due to political reasons, so the concept of an authority figure with a long beard is a pretty scary thing," says Sarshar. "I grew up going, 'Wow, how do I NOT look like that?'"